Worldscope can be accessed via the Datastream platform, which is available on workstations in the Koerner Library, Wayne Deans Investment Analysis Centre, the David Lam Library, and the Sauder School PhD Lab.

Access to this product has been made possible by funding from the UBC Library and the Sauder School of Business.

September 30th, 2013 by allancho | Comments Off on An Inescapable Perspective: Conversations in Science

The term “inescapable perspective” is a phrase used by the famous astronomer and science populariser Carl Sagan that describes the notion that viewing our Earth from the outside—as a part of the cosmos—allows us to gain a unique perspective of it and therefore ourselves in a broader context. This perspective is made possible by the scientific endeavours that led to space exploration and other discoveries. Sagan states:

Which aspects of our nature will prevail is uncertain, particularly when our visions and prospects are bound to one small part of the small planet Earth. But up there in the Cosmos an inescapable perspective awaits. National boundaries are not evident when we view the Earth from space. Fanatical ethnic or religious or national identifications are a little difficult to support when we see our Earth as a fragile blue crescent fading to become an inconspicuous point of light against the bastion and the citadel of the stars.

The Carl Sagan Association for the Communication of Science at UBC’s exhibition at the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre merges a combination of artefacts (or tools, books) which represent the various scientific disciplines at UBC in addition to conceptual art submitted by the community which is inspired by these disciplines.

For more information about the Carl Sagan Association, please find here.

September 27th, 2013 by Kristen Wong | Comments Off on Public Symposium On Endangered Languages: Indigeneity, Community, and Creative Practice – Presentation by John Wynne and Tyler Peterson

Webcast sponsored by the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre and hosted by the UBC Museum of Anthropology. This one-day public symposium at MOA focuses on the opportunities and consequences of language documentation for local communities and outsiders, exploring how such documentation is used by speakers to communicate identity, sovereignty, and contemporary representations of community. Are creative and artistic explorations of language documentation at odds with the goal of revitalization, or do they open up new possibilities for understanding the complex social and historical territory of ongoing colonial relationships? As the multi-sensory installation Anspayaxw opens at MOA’s Satellite Gallery downtown, this symposium features artist John Wynne, Gitxsan participants Louise Wilson and Barbara Harris, and linguist Tyler Peterson who will discuss with scholars, artists, and activists to examine language endangerment, ethnography and documentation in the digital age, and artistic practice.

About the Speakers

John Wynne is an award-winning sound artist whose work includes site-specific installations, ‘composed documentaries’ for radio, projects with speakers of endangered languages and a body of work with heart and lung transplant recipients. He has a PhD from Goldsmiths College, University of London and is a Reader in Sound Arts at the University of the Arts London.

Barbara Harris is a Gitksan elder from Kispiox, BC. Over the past decade she has dedicated considerable time and effort to Gitksan language maintenance and revitalization. She also works closely with linguists at the UBC department of linguistics, and has made substantial contributions to deepening our understanding of the finer points of the Gitksan language. She is one of 6 Gitxsan speakers featured in John Wynne’s Anspyaxw installation.

Tyler Peterson is a linguist and Assistant Professor at the University of Arizona who works on Gitksan. His research interests focus on how understudied languages such as Gitksan can enrich our empirical and theoretical understanding of how meaning is embodied by language. This work is balanced with a strong interest in endangered language documentation, maintenance and revitalization.